It’s time to get crafty. There is an issue in our house, and its name is protein. I have a child who doesn’t seem to like
peanut butter or cheese. I mean, there
are only so many meats and even I get bored with his diet after a while. The two food items that thousands of children
the world over love and practically subsist on, my kid won’t eat. Or rather, he won’t try. Especially the peanut butter. 

Cheese he will eat on occasion if it’s prepared in particular
ways. Breaded mozzarella sticks, for
example.  Mac and cheese. Any other processed food that’s cheese
flavored. But straight cheese to munch
on? Cubed, sliced, or string? Nope.  This is painful because Keen and I are cheese
people. It’s what we do in hot weather
when we don’t want to cook; go to the store, pick out cheeses, breads, lunch
meat and fruit and chow. There are
probably ten types of cheese in our fridge right now. Except Velveeta. Please God, don’t make Chance a Velveeta
lover. 

Anyway, it would be really nice to occasionally feed my kid
a peanut-butter sandwich in lieu of the parade of chicken, pork, & beef
products. Here you go, kid, some
alternate protein, portable, yummy, and nutritious. It’s also another great summer fav. He won’t
try it! I spread it on bread and he
pokes at it. I make little sandwiches in
fun shapes and he ignores them. I think
it might be the texture or something but I have yet to get him to put any in
his mouth. I even told him once it was
ice cream. This has been basically going
on for a year. Not that I’m hanging over
him every day trying to get him to eat it (that’s a recipe for a lifetime
peanut hate), but I do bust it out occasionally to see if “he’ll try it
today”. He likes Reeses Pieces (because
he ain’t crazy) so I know the flavor appeals to him. I just need to force gently encourage him towards
eating PB&J sandwiches.

And that’s when it hit me. I’ll get him hooked on peanut butter cookies first! First I’ll give him the cookie. Then I’ll name them as “peanut butter,” and
eventually, I’ll sucker him into eating other peanut butter dishes.

Bwa ha ha! Genius! (Well, maybe not so much
or I would have thought of it earlier.)  

Today I made the cookies. I offered him some cookie dough first but he wouldn’t go for it. Then, for his afternoon snack, I laid out two
big cookies and his milk. Chance perked
right up at the word “cookie” but they must not have looked like he thought
they should because he gave me the fisheye and bolted. I decided not to push it. Just left them out there. He would get curious and/or hungry eventually
(I’m so mean).

Two hours later Chance fluttered back and warily eyed his
cookies. He picked one up, waved it
through the air, talked to it and then… he licked it! Twenty minutes after that (this wasn’t as
fast a process as I thought it would be) he’d gone from licking, waving, and
talking to his cookies to actually taking a small bite. In due time, he’d eaten almost all of the
cookies. Success!!

Well… until right after dinner a couple more hours later
when he found a forlorn, discarded chunk of cookie on the floor, chewed it
vigorously and then either spit it out or threw up a little from the sheer
volume of food in his stomach. (We
weren’t sure which.) Either way, he did
one of those smear it all over his face and hair in a panicked attempt to clean
off his hands. Spewed masticated
peanut-buttery goodness is just not… good.

Maybe he liked it a little too much?

Not exactly success but I’m still going to call it protein
progress.

 – the
weirdgirl